I'm contradicting myself ( who cares?) but at risk of being seen as the most gullible voter on the East Coast I think the shut down/end shut down was a success.

I wrote last weekend that then was the best point for Schumer to go to the mat - altho I believed it would cost us votes in November. Hal and others disagreed about it costing us , who knows ?Now we won't because at least this shut down was a victim of infanticide.

Given my mixed message ( Schumer should go the whole hog on behalf of DACA but the shutdown would both cost us in November and ,sadly, foster antagonism against the issue itself and the DACA recipients ) how can I switch to what I'm saying now? Well..... that was then.

There will be a vote on "some sort of immigration legislation after Feb 8" pace Michelle Goldberg..On it's face isn't that worse than a vote on ,say, Jan 23? Not necessarily because

A on Feb 8 we may be able to count on most of the gang of 20 . If so it may be 'Chuck not McConnell who will have a filibuster- proof majority, and

B at a minimum a shut down then won't endanger SCHIP because that unconscionable bargaining chip has now been severed from DACA

Bottom line we will be in at an at least somewhat- and possibly a lot- stronger position on Feb 8 .

I'll complicate this message with a certainly unwelcome sermon. Schumer is currently the guy. Maybe he won't work out , we'll see. But until he gives us good reason to believe the contrary we should assume:

A he's on our side and

B.he knows a lot of important stuff that we don't and

C. the boss is the boss until he stops being the boss. It isn't useful to keep pulling a cake out of the oven to check whether it's been baked..

Comments

I dunno. Threatening to shut down the government seems like a dumbass, counterproductive tactic to me. It didn't work for Gingrich in 1995 or Cruz in 2013. Nor have any other GOP threats to blow it all up gotten them what they demanded. Why does anyone think this will work?

Yeah, I've heard the arguments about why Democrats are supposedly in a stronger position--Trump owns this, DACA is popular, bla bla bla. But there's no historical evidence to back up these predictions, just a lot of wishful thinking. The problem is that time is not on the side of the hostage-takers. Sure, more Americans might blame Trump at this moment, and they might want to help the Dreamers, but the longer it goes on, the more the conversation inevitably shifts from the cause to the shutdown. Whining that Republicans "started" it won't make a difference. The public will see one party that is ready to open the government without conditions and one party that refuses to allow it unless certain demands are met. Sooner or later, some nervous Democrats will cave to the inevitable, and it will all be for nothing.

I'm all for Democrats using whatever weapons are at their disposal to rescue the Dreamers, but this particular gun don't shoot straight. Threatening to shut down the government is a fools quest.

First ,to repeat I think it's sensible to defer to Schumer's judgement Which by me , has been OK so far. The three day-over a weekend- shut down was a tentative cat-scratch. Non consequential. While providing some crumbs to the 16 dems who didn't agree with him to suspend/defer until Feb 8-.

I love them all but want to carry a majority of the states in 2020 and exclude the psephological Dr. Strangeloves from the next round of redistricting. Or at least their ubiquity.

I agree that whining : the Republicans have the presidency, the house and the senate! -is ineffective. Inside baseball, an MEGO for everyone else. Complaining they're not misusing their power to prevent us from doing what we ought not to do in the first place. "Stop me before I screw up more."

And also agree that if we shut the Govt down we'll be seen as the ones that shut the govt down.

My guess is that there will be a responsive bill out of the senate. After that I can imagine Trump endorsing it .And taking bows. And of course there's a simple majority available in the House.But not a "Hastert majority" i.e. one among Republicans alone . For Ryan to let democracy work Trump/Kelly would have to actually lean on him. And for that the "Senate" bill would have to include the damn fence.

So include it. And leave it to the next real President to send out the cancellation notices. It could be our Hadrian's Wall. Guided tours. A new way to lower the unemployment rate. And make Las Cruces great again.

Republicans aligned with Trump are unlikely to go for any bill that does not offer a major boost in border wall funding.

@ Politico.com, Updated 01/23/2018 06:45 PM EST

Chuck Schumer is taking his big spending boost for Donald Trump’s border wall off the table.

The Senate minority leader, through an aide, informed the White House that he was retracting the offer he made last week to give Trump well north of the $1.6 billion in wall funding Trump had asked for this year, according to two Democrats. And now they say Trump will simply not get a better deal than that on his signature campaign promise.

Schumer “took it off,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “He called the White House yesterday and said it’s over.”

After the publication of this story, a spokesman clarified that the wall offer was retracted Sunday, rather than Monday [....]

Republicans price for temporary Dreamer extensions may be billions more, plus all their other immigration restrictions. They may see Dreamers as the gift (hostages) that keeps on giving.

Thanks to Dems Dreamers face deportation, I love them but Democrats using them as pawns SAD! Schumer wants to punish The TROOPS and open our borders to murdering gangs! NEED A BEAUTIFUL WALL!! MAGA! @RealDonaldTrump

I agree that the whole thing is overblown. The great catastrophe here is that Schumer agreed to a full three-week extension on budgets talks. It's not like he let Hitler annex Czechoslovakia. That said, this shut-down strategy is a no-win contest. It was and continues to be futile for Democrats to pursue this avenue.

The Dreamers' fate rests in the hands of Mitch and Paul, unfortunately. A bill to protect them can get a bipartisan majority but only if those cynical bastards permit such a bill to reach the floor. Democrats should worry less about shut downs and more about galvanizing the public for such a bill.

Well, Schumer'd have to be a seer to foresee this level of flip-flopping that just happened especially after he invented a new name for him this morning. I almost suspect some kinda secret Brooklyn vs. Queens schoolboy shit going on here, they know how to "get each other's goat".

Nor are they rewarded for their parents' misdeeds. While there's a certain amount of compassion to the discussion, there's also a certain amount of deceit, cynical "think about the children" used to get the fingers in the door, to then wedge it open further.

More than 30 senators — about a third of the entire Senate — met late Wednesday afternoon to discuss the outlines of an immigration deal before a March 5 deadline for hundreds of thousands of immigrants facing deportation.

The senators huddled shortly before President Trump announced he would be willing to create a 10- to 12-year-long path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients in exchange for $25 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border [.....]

The Hill did a video a few hours earlier before the Trump surprise flipflop:

only in that I think it is one of the main memes involved in who has won and who has lost the national elections in the U.S. since like 1980. So I readily admit to bias confirmation here. Still, it's a big majority number there.

Overall, is it not just a continual cycle of "throw the bums out, this isn't working?" So much so that campaigns play to it so much so that we are inured and don't even notice it?

The appeal of Independent types from time to time like, oh, Perot, Ventura, Jesse Jackson, Nader, and yes even Trump, though he the ran within the party, and Bernie, even though he did the same, is that someone like that can jolt us out of the two-party broken governing system? Failure is the status quo, and then there's even tthe known phenomenon of some voting on purpose for a gridlock effect because many have come to expect that if one of the two parties accomplishes anything, it is going to make things worse? That only if it's bi-partisan does it have a chance of being becoming better government?

I don't see any overarching lesson in the failure of shut-down politics. Brinkmanship and partisan aggression can be politically effective when done well, even if they're bad for the country. But these shut-down threats just don't work as intended. It's a bad strategy.

Every time republicans tried shut downs they failed miserably. I don't see why people think it would be different when democrats try one. Or that republicans wouldn't use the same strategy to stop democrats as we successfully used to stop their shut down attempts.

The Dreamers fate is with Republicans, perhaps even with Steven Miller or General Kelly. Elections have consequences, this one put a racist in the Oval Office, and a race baiting Party in control of Congress.

The Democrats drew attention to the Dreamers with the weekend shutdown, but shutdowns won't get a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a racist nutball Republican President to amnesty "illegals."

The GOP will only act if the political cost to the GOP for deporting Dreamers is deemed, by enough Republicans, to be greater than not deporting them. Their decision, with a few individual exceptions, will have nothing to do with what's decent, what's Christian or what's good for the nation.

One thing for sure, Republicans will never vote to give Dreamers a viable path to citizenship.

Thanks for the tip. I see at Breitbart that the shock of "Amnesty Don" is due to the whole "Grahamnesty" plot which they've uncovered in tweets. Coulter's on board with uncovering that one, splaining that Graham is little different than Kucinich. Schumer, who's he?

o McConnell will allow the vote. The "resistance" hysteria about McConnell's "commitment" was wasted emotion.

o Between republicans and "band of 20" dems there will enough votes for both "dreamers" and a starter section of the beautiful Wall . Schumer's withdrawn approval will be irrelevant . As he knows.

o House will just go along. Why not?

Nothing to it. A signature accomplishment for the orange haired fatty.

The Mayor of Atlantic City can break a celebratory bottle of Hoboken's finest champagne over the first (and only) completed Wall section. He's fully experienced with Donald's edifice complex. Grooved swing.

I like what you said about Breitbart, it explains the appeal to a certain type of young male. It's also a kind of passion that's not lasting, and it's likely that something totally different will be the next Breitbart. Comes to mind Coulter and Limbaugh are getting really old, getting spotlight for way past expiration date. Hannity's not had it as long and I could see him flip with the wind to keep spotlight. (Remember Bill O'Reilly? Nope, nobody does.)

On Congress and immigration, I'm with you. That is:hopeful. I see inklings that they are about to get serious, as in: let's actually sit down and finally try to fix this thing and make some laws that last a while. I.E., tired of being at the bottom with the public approval ratings for decades, let's actually do what we are supposed to for once, show them we can do it. You never know, it could happen, Trump could just be the catalyst that broke the camel's back. Like you (and the Buddhist master) said: we'll see.

Small silver lining in the major cloud upon us is that Congress may regularly start thinking that way too and get used to it, even if the president belongs to the majority party in Congress. Happens to be my opinion that the founders meant it to be that way....

President Donald Trump on Monday will propose a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children — a key concession to Democrats that he hopes will win their support for a massive border wall with Mexico.

In a call withWhite House surrogates and Hill staffers Thursday afternoon, senior White House adviser Stephen Miller outlined the newframework, which also calls for dramatic restrictions on legal immigration as well as $25 billion for border security.

Miller said the outlinerepresented “a compromise position that we believe… will get 60 votes in the Senate” and “a framework that ultimately will lead to passage of a law.” Another senior administration official told POLITICO the White House hoped legislation fleshing out those principles would hit the Senate floor as early as the first week of February. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that he hoped lawmakers "will look to this framework for guidance as they work towards an agreement."

The proposal, however, could complicate ongoing negotiations between a bipartisan group of senators who have been meeting frequently to discuss their own accord on immigration. Indeed, Democrats blasted the framework Thursday night, even as it displeased some conservatives [....]

The Florida Republican is steering clear of bipartisan Senate talks to protect Dreamers — and pushing a more conservative approach.

So I am wondering if the "White House" plan is still being seen as "Grahamnesty" over at Breitbart, so I go over there and see the headline, the once dear leader gets full blame, it's "Don's Amnesty Bonanza":

Yes I am thinking about the troll thing again too. Great minds think alike! Here's where it's complex: in the old pre-Trump days, politicians purposefully took advantage, it really was the media's fault, pandering to "clicks", everyone ignores the important stories going on, i.e., while everyone's arguing about Monica and Bill, let's slip this thing and that thing through, like your link. But they can't really be safe doing that with Trump,because no one can be sure where he will drag the attention next. He often doesn't have a true political agenda, it's all about selling the Trump persona.

And while it all may be grand foil for Democrats to make a meal out of, it's truly depressing that the boring stuff gets thrown away like yesterday's lunch until and unless Trump makes a point of it. Which means in a weird way that he really does control the news.

The bipartisan piece of legislation provides recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, commonly known as "Dreamers," an opportunity for citizenship while ordering a study to figure out what border security measures are needed, according to the Journal.

Senate aides told the Journal that the plan would provide people who have resided in the U.S. since Dec. 31, 2013, with legal status and a path to citizenship.

The Journal reported that the legislation is similar to House legislation introduced by Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Pete Aguilar(D-Calif.).

“It’s time we end the gridlock so we can quickly move on to completing a long-term budget agreement that provides our men and women in uniform the support they deserve,” McCain said in a statement to the Journal on Sunday [.....]

[....] Last month, Jared Kushner announced the Administration’s support for the bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, writing that the six million Americans in local and federal prisons are included among “the forgotten men and women” that Trump vowed to fight for during his Presidential campaign.. “Get a bill to my desk, and I will sign it,” Trump promised. The House passed the bill this week.

President Trump on Thursday canceled a planned summit next month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the rogue nation in a letter explaining his abrupt decision.

“I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump said to Kim in a letter released by the White House on Thursday morning.

The summit had been planned for June 12 in Singapore.

In his letter, Trump held open the possibility that the two leaders could meet at a later date to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, which Trump has been pushing.

"President Trump’s unprecedented meeting on Monday with the FBI director and deputy attorney general regarding a case in which he is directly involved may turn out to be the defining moment of his presidency and for his party. Bob Bauer at the Lawfare blog writes:

North Korea is threatening to reconsider Kim Jong Un’s participation in a summit with President Trump next month, saying it is up to the United States to decide whether it wants to “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown.”

Stacey Abrams just one the Democratic Gubernatorial race in Georgia by roughly 3:1. She could become the first black and first female Governor of Georgia. It looks like the Republican candidate will be chosen after a runoff election since no one reached 50% of the vote.

Evans argued that Democrats could win by appealing to moderate Republicans. Abrams argued that the party needs to focus on disaffected Democrats. Abrams won. Abrams even won Democrats in northern Georgia with small minority populations.

Kendrick Lamar brought on a white fan onstage to rap along with his song “m.A.A.D. City”. When the fan rapped the song as written, repeating the N-word three times, Lamar halted the performance. He told the fan that she could not use the word. She apologized. He gave her a second chance. She almost rapped the word again, the crowd was not having it. Lamar ushered the fan off stage and continued the performance.

The audience responded negatively to the white fan using the words on stage. She lost the crowd with the first use of the words. Some did point out that she was just rapping the words as written.